The Men’s Movement

by
Rick Koepcke, M.A.
E. James Wilder, Ph.D.

In 1990 the PBS networks aired a special entitled “A Gathering of Men”, in which viewers witnessed men of all ages and backgrounds coming together to share their hurts, grieve over broker relationships, and allow themselves to be hugged and comforted by other men. This extraordinary scene was presided over and explained by Robert Bly, a poet and author of a new book, Iron John. As interviewed by Bill Moyers, Bly explained that these men were learning to express the grief and rage they felt at being cut off from their fathers an other men, and were now connecting to what suppressed by modern society. Thus were many people introduced for the first time to what has come to be called the Men’s Movement, and to some of its central figures and themes.

This article will attempt to outline the growth and dynamics behind the men’s movement, both in its secular and Christian variations, with special emphasis on the psychological and pastoral implications for the Church. Whatever one may believe about some of the manifestations of the movement, we believe it is not something that those in Church leadership can afford to overlook, simply because it does involve men, and seems to be catching their imaginations and passions in a way the Church has
not done in the last few decades. This article is aimed primarily at pastors and others in ministry positions who hope to reach men and are concerned about the lack of male involvement in the Church today. This explanation of the men’s movement, its key elements, and the potential it affords the Church, will help those in ministry with ability and courage take hold of this opportunity.

The authors are both licensed therapists practicing in California. Or practice is made up primarily of men, the majority of which are Christians. The issues raised by the men’s movement are issues which we see our clients struggling with frequently, in various guises and degrees. It is our hope and belief that much of the psychological and spiritual healing needed by our male clients would come from the community of believers, and specifically other men in the Body. This, of course, presupposes that there are men with sufficient health and desire to have something to offer these men. We believe that a
knowledge and understanding of the issues raised by the men’s movement, coupled with a willingness to aggressively address those issues, will influence the Church’s effectiveness in reaching the men of our society in the next few decades.

HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT
The men’s movement did not suddenly spring into being at the filming of Bill Moyer’s documentary, as it may appear, but actually has its origins in the women’s liberation movement of the sixties and seventies. Without going into all the social and political aspects of the women’s movement, we can recognize the fact that changes in women’s roles encouraged by that phenomenon dictated changes for men as well, although this had been less readily acknowledged. Some men in the seventies embraced the freedom from traditional sex roles offered by feminism and responded with their own “movement” of sorts. This early response can probably best be labeled a men’s sensitivity movement”, and was documented in Warren Farrel’s 1976 book, The Liberated Male. Unlike the current men’s movement which emphasizes and extols masculine characteristics, this earlier movement focused more on changing the way men viewed women, and encouraging men to develop their own “feminine” qualities, such as sensitivity and nurturing. In this way it actually had more in common with the women’s movement than the current men’s movement, as espoused by Bly and others.

THE CURRENT MOVEMENT
The real advent of a men’s movement has occurred in the last few years, as men began to change the way they viewed themselves.  Robert Bly, John Lee and others began celebrating masculinity and masculine characteristics as positive and necessary to our society. The leaders of the current men’s movement lean heavily on “methopoetic” figures such as Ulysses, Hercules, and Pan, in an effort to get men in touch with the “wild man” within. Robert Bly’s book, Iron John, is a celebration of this wild man, devalued and emasculated by society, but ready to roar into life again with some drum-beating and other exercises shared with fellow “warriors”. Bly’s book, which is based upon an old Norse
fairy tale about a wild man who lives in the woods and helps the king’s son save his kingdom, touches upon many of the important tenets of the secular men’s movement:

(1) The need to re-connect to the “Wild Man” within us;

(2) The need to separate from the too powerful mother (and from other women to whom we have given too much power);

(3) The terrible effects of being cut off from the father (the “father wound”);

(4)The need for mentors to show us the secrets of re-connecting to our masculine energy.

The discussion of these points is carried out in the midst of much Jungian analysis and New Age-sounding ritual, as the men try to reach back to something old and primal. Tribal customs and even shamanism can emerge here.

Bly identifies several enemies of the masculine soul. The first villain is the Industrial Revolution, which separated sons from their fathers at work, thereby interfering with normal father-son bonding. Bly asserts that every generation of men since the Industrial Revolution is worse off than the one before because of this lack of connection.

Another of Bly’s villains is religion, and Christianity in particular. He sees Christianity as a religion that robbed the old gods of their sexuality; it is accused of “cutting the legs off the goat and making it a snake”. In other words Christianity is an emasculating force in the world, used by mothers and
emasculated priests to get their sons to be “nice boys” and so kill the Wild Man within.1

Much of the focus of the men’s movement, at weekend gatherings and weekly meetings, is to help men uncover the pain of the “father-wound”, the loss that men felt as boys in not being able to connect to their fathers in meaningful ways. Bly asserts that grief, not anger, is the most important emotion for men to experience in connection to this wound. Thus men are encouraged to grieve together, to weep for themselves and each other, over the shortcomings of their fathers and all that they missed. They
also frequently confront the pain they themselves may have caused, as fathers. and husbands, as a result of their won wounding. Participants in the movement are encouraged to look to each other to at least partially meet some of those needs for fathers, brothers, and the “mentoring” needed to heal their
masculinity. The strengths and problems with this approach will be examined later in this article.

THE SIX STREAMS OF THE CHRISTIAN MEN’S MOVEMENT:
The Christian men’s movement, although more recently developed, probably has more diversity than the secular movement at this point. We can identify sex different “streams” feeding the fledgling Christian movement at this time.

1) Men’s Liberation: a “men can feel too” reaction to women’s liberation.

2) Athletics: Promise Keepers fellowships

3) Men need healing: recognition of men’s emotional wounds

4) Fathering: reaction to custody disputes and abandoned children.

5) Male sexuality: a reaction to the sexual revolution and an attempt to redeem injured sexuality.

6) Marriage advocates: a “men should be good husbands” response to the divorce rates.

Stream One: Men’s Liberation
This part of the movement flowed from the secular men’s sensitivity movement of the seventies, mentioned above. Jack Balswick, a Christian sociologist and professor, wrote The Inexpressive Male to liberate Christian men from traditional stereotypical male roles. This movement continues in educated
circles in such works as “Men Have Feelings Too!” by Brian Jones and Linda Phillips-Jones. A 1992 seminar on marital therapy was entitled “Why Can’t a Man be more like a Woman”, in mocking
reference to Professor Higgin’s words in My Fair Lady.

In the late sixties and early seventies, Christian seminars on masculinity were usually taught by women, for women. To have two men for every fifty women attending was considered a good margin.
Masculinity was compassionately viewed through the expression, “the fragile male ego.” During this era, a Protestant missionary from Austria named Walter Trobisch wrote a book he entitled “The
Pain of Being a Man”, which publishers promptly retitled “All a Man Can Be (and What a Woman Should Know).” Trobisch wrote of the pain in men’s lives in a way that asked others to have mercy
on men because they were limited by their pain, and not the all-powerful ogres that women’s liberation seemed to imply. “Man is suffering by women don’t know it”, says the forward to Trobisch’s book.

Stream Two: Athletics
The closest thing to a Protestant men’s movement is the “Promise Keepers.” This was the brain child of coach Bill McCartney. In July of 1992, 22,000 men gathered in the Colorado rain to hear Dave Simmons, and ex-football coach turned fathering advocate, author Edwin Cole, counselor Larry Crabb, Pentecostal pastor Jack Hayford, minister turned-counselor Gary Smalley, old-fashioned Gospel preacher Dr. E. V. Hill, Hill, Vineyard pastor and author Gordon Dalbey and the director of the National Center for Fathering, Ken Canfield.

These men plus a few others constitute the closest approximation of a Christian men’s movement. Their approach to men comes out of the coaching and sports metaphor, which says: Men are in need
of the right coaching to be able to perform as they need to in their families, work and church. The conference featured encouragement, admonition, and exhortation. Founders hope to attract 100,000 men in the next two years. Since sports is perhaps the major hub of masculine culture in the United States, it has provided a common language for many divergent “coaches of men” to proclaim their message. Even a cursory analysis of these speakers will express a number of different forces among men.

Stream Three: Healing
Gordon Dalbey was the first man to pick up the influence of the secular men’s movement and extend it into the Church in his book, “Healing the Masculine Soul”. It was a book by a man for men.

He called for truth and strength in men’s lives but, unlike his predecessors, he followed the lead of Leanne Payne in believing that healing the male soul preceded exhortation. It is through healing, Dalbey emphasized, and particularly healing prayer, that the Father God would heal men and allow them to receive and act on exhortation. In both this book and his subsequent work, “Father and Son, Dalbey resists the idea that telling men what they must do, or even pressing them for commitment to action, will produce change. Change, for Dalbey, comes through healing encounters with God. It is only after such an encounter that commitment and exhortation are beneficial or even possible. Dalbey stands somewhat alone as a voice calling for healing before exhortation and commitment.

Stream Four: Fathering
Ken Canfield, of the National Center of Fathering, entered the men’s movement through fathering concerns. While Dalbey addressed the need for sons to be healed, Canfield moved towards fathers and their needs. He produces tests of fathering styles and other aids. In his book, “The Seven Secrets of Effective Fathers”, Canfield leans toward education and support from wives and other men as the primary means of change for fathers. His style is gentle and colloquial, his message well-organized and
simple. He and Dalbey have in common that they do not believe men can succeed by trying harder.

Stream Five: Male Sexuality
Leanne Payne followed Trobisch in the field of masculine sexuality. In her books “The Broken Image”, “Healing the Homosexual”, and “Crisis in Masculinity”, Payne applies the principles of healing prayer and a somewhat Jungian view of human development and trauma to the problem of male sexual preference.

The basic formula is simple: men who fail to bond with their fathers experience a great injury and deformity in their masculinity. While this deformity can take many shapes, it is only solved by bonding with the father and, in the absence of a healthy father, with the Father God. This bonding and
instruction in maleness is something men must do for each other, according to Payne.

Stream Six: Marriage Advocates
Gary Smalley and John Trent, authors of several Christian books, become well-know advocates for women among evangelicals. They appeal to roughly the same audience that listens to Dobson’s “Focus on the Family”, a show overwhelmingly geared for women.

They continue to advocate for women in their latest book. “The Hidden Value of a Man”, published by Focus on the Family. They come into the men’s movement as marriage advocates, by which we mean that their focus is more toward saving marriages that saving men. Their books emphasize the man’s role in living up to his responsibility to his wife, to the extent that more than one of our clients, in reading Smalley’s books, have commented, “I don’t think he likes men very much”. Unlike the human sexuality advocates who focus on men’s pain, this group focuses on men’s power (their responsibility as head of their family) and their failure to use that power correctly. Marriage advocates represent in general the “admonish and exhort” school of change because they view men as being essentially intact. Steve Farrar’s book “Point Man”, Edwin Cole’s “Real Man”, Robert Hicks’ “Uneasy Manhood”, and Patrick Morley’s “The Man in the Mirror” follow essentially this approach.

Criticisms of the Movement:
There are some who cynically say that the Christian men’s movement is a creation of book publishers eager to find a way to move into the male market segment. Most Christian books are sold to women, and this opportunity is too good to pass up. A more serious objection raised to both the secular and Christian men’s movement is that it is just another attempt to avoid personal responsibility by conveniently blaming one’s parents, in this case father, for one’s woes. The secular men’s movement is made up of “whiners” who live in the past, blaming their parents for whatever is not working in their present lives, and refusing to “get on with things” and take charge of their own lives.

To understand the men’s movement, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of the concept of blame. Participants are charged with avoiding responsibility by putting the blame on their fathers. In this respect, the emphasis on the “father wound” described in the secular literature by Bly et. al. and in the Christian literature by Dalbey, is seen as blaming the father for the son’s problem. While it is not without reason to assume that some people will use any explanation as an opportunity to blame
someone, we suspect that this criticism has its roots in the critic’s own unwillingness to face the wounds in his own past, as well as a tendency to blame others.

We need to make a clear distinction between description and blame. For instance, when God interviewed the pair in the Garden of Eden, his question was descriptive: “”What happened here?”

The man’s answer was blaming or accusatory: “It’s the woman’s fault.” In describing what is wrong with men, it is impossible to avoid mention of their fathers. Indeed, to avoid mention of the father would be to conclude that the father has no effect on his children, hardly a reasonable conclusion. As the men’s movement has highlighted the father and given him honor, they have also pointed out the effects of his impact, whether good or bad. To those who view explanations as descriptions of history,
blame is added only if it can be shown that the father intentionally and knowingly produced the damage. There are no significant writings in the Christian men’s movement that make that claim. The prevailing view of fathers is that they do not know what they have to give and are uncertain how to give much of what they do have.

ANALYSIS OF THE SECULAR MOVEMENT
A. Positive Aspects:
The secular men’s movement has three major contributions to make to the understanding of men in our society. Two stand out because the truth they express has been forgotten, and the third points to a deficit in most Christian churches.

1) First of all, men are wounded. The dismal statistics of divorce, spousal and child abuse, addictive behaviors, all are evidence of the brokenness that men, particularly, feel in our culture. Men are recognizing their brokenness, and reaching out for healing and direction in surprising numbers. The movement itself, along with the burgeoning number of 12-step, recovery and self-help groups, is further evidence of men’s awareness and willingness to seek help. In our own practices, we have seen an increased willingness in men to enter therapy to deal with heir own issues, and not simply as a last-ditch effort to save a crumbling marriage. The secular men’s movement puts a great focus on the father’s role and responsibility in creating the “father wound.” It is hard to argue with the validity of their argument. The importance of the father is building character and being a life-giver/protector in, of course, a rather prominent Biblical concept.

2) Second, men need role models. The demand is growing for mentors, father-figures, and brothers, to grieve together, affirm each other and heal the wounds. Much of the strength of the secular movement comes from giving men permission to need other men. They are encouraged to connect with each other on a level not previously experienced by most men. Perhaps there has never been a time when the adult male has so felt both the need and the absence of male role models to set the course for masculine
growth. As Dalbey has pointed out in his books, the old WWII/John Wayne model of masculinity is no longer valid, rejected by the anti-war, question-authority dogma of the Sixties., Desiring to not be our fathers, to not be the unfeeling macho-stereotype, to be sensitive to women’s needs, many men have
become what Bly calls “soft” males: caring, sensitive men who lack courage, determination and the will to stand for something. This sense of lostness, of needing role models, had profound and exciting implications for the Church.

3) Third, the secular movement promotes men being vulnerable with other men. Unlike the first two strengths of the secular movement, this one stands out in contrast to the Christian church, especially the evangelical/Holiness traditions. The emphasis on being born again/Spirit-filled/sanctified has dept
men hidden and alone with their brokenness, afraid to admit humanness, sin, or even inadequate partenting. The Good News of the Gospel is that all things have become new, leaving many men
embarrassed and unsure of what to do with the parts of them that still seem very much like their old, carnal selves. Thus, the isolation from others that many men express is exacerbated in the case of the Christian man, who is afraid of being “disqualified” as a Christian if he should share his weaknesses with a brother.

This extreme sense of isolation, and the strong fear of rejection that goes along with it, is on of the most common dynamics we encounter in the men we counsel. Many Christians (especially evangelicals) are still uncomfortable with the full extent to which our humanity has been damaged by sin. When dealing with emotional wounds, Christians have frequently applied a Band-Aid and a prayer when surgery is indicated. Even traditions that encourage confession do so in the isolation of a confessional, away from the community of other men. The secular men’s movement has done a better job of accepting the brokenness of humanity.

Without a stake in appearing righteous, their meeting proclaim loudly and clearly the pain they feel and the deficits it has produced in their lives. Where does the Christian man, the deacon or minister, have to go with that kind of confession?

Within the secular movement such confessions are addressed because they directly relate to men’s pain. It is through this pain and consequent grief that men form bonds that heal. This is the truth behind all the jokes about male bonding.

Negative Aspects of the Secular Movement:
As important and valid as some of the basic tenets of the secular movement are, there are inherent weaknesses in the movement which also cannot be overlooked. The secular world does not make the
mistake of minimizing the pain; however, perhaps the reason the father wound is displayed so glaringly in secular writings is that leaders of the secular movement are not connected to the source of healing for that wound. They are unwilling to take the last, courageous step, the “leap of faith” to connect to God as Father. They are quite aware, and willing to face the damage done by sin in their fathers’ lives and their own. Unable to find a remedy for the damage, however, they settle for suffering together, crying together, beating out their rage together on drums that echo into empty skies. They have not realized that the blessing of the Father is stronger that the curse of the father. Thus, what comes through in their writings, over and over again, is the depth and intensity of the father wound, in which without access to a viable cure, they remain absorbed.

ANALYSIS OF THE CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT
A. Positive Aspects:
Besides the obvious advantage of being tied in to eternal truth, the Christian men’s movement does have some distinct advantages over its secular counterpart.

1) The first of these is the sheer diversity of the movement. The Christian movement includes the six streams, as already stated, and numerous Christian organizations to call men from different points of interest, from the Fellowship of Christians Anglers Society, to the Promise Keepers’ groups, to Ken
Canfield’s fathering groups. Men do not have to be persuaded to run off into the woods and beat drums to find a place in this movement.

2) Along with the diversity, there is also greater unity than in the secular movement. This unity stems in part form the fact that Christian men already belong to a smaller subsystem of society, and feel rather firmly linked together by a common belief system. Christian men are probably more keenly invested in retaining that unity, whereas the secular movement already shows signs of splintering as different leaders pursue their own agendas, sometimes without high regard for the effect on the
overall movement. Despite the different streams of the Christian movement, commonalty of values and general purpose will likely keep the streams flowing towards the same end.

3) This unity is enhanced by the fact that the Church has existing networks for reaching men. The denominations themselves, in the Protestant world, provide many points of contact with men. While these organizations have not always been employed effectively to reach men in the past, there does exist at least the possibility of doing so. The secular men’s movement has the task of finding ways to reach men with good news that there is a place for the wounded; the Church already has many distribution networks in place, if they can and will use them.

4) Perhaps not surprisingly, considering the traditionally high involvement of women in churches, the Christian men’s ,movement also has the advantage of having both men and women involved – as
writers, healers, and teachers. As noted earlier, Christian women seem to be more compassionate and patient of men in the process of healing that their secular counterparts. It is hard to imagine a woman with the wisdom and grace of Leanne Payne, for instance, speaking as a voice for men in the secular movement.

B. Negative Aspects:
With all of its strengths of diversity and unity, there are some subtle currents coursing through the streams of the Christian men’s movement that have the potential of throwing it off-course before it is able to reach its full measure of power and force.

1) First, the danger of excesses of exhortation. As stated earlier, many of the leaders in the Christian movement come out of the coaching/sports mind set (Simmons, McCartney) or from the pastor/evangelist mode (Smalley, E.V. Hill). They emphasize encouragement, exhortation and admonition: “This is what’s wrong with you men, now let’s try it again.” The coaches may use sports metaphors and concentrate on “better techniques” to fix things, while the pastors use scripture to point out men’s potentials or shortcomings and exhort them with what God expects from them. There appears to be an underlying assumption among exhorters and marriage advocates that men’s decisions are the problem. Everything would be alright (with the marriage, the family, the Church) if only men would do something — like keep their promises. Men are portrayed as indifferent and uninvolved,
rascals and scoundrels, or bumbling, inept Dagwood Bumstead-types who need women to save them from themselves. Exhorters arefar more likely to make the man the “heavy” in the marital or
family situation. Consider the difference in tone of most Mother’s Day sermons as compared to the exhortations to men on Father’s Day. Women are almost universally praised and honored, while a sermon for fathers is likely to be followed by an alter call, to give men an opportunity to confess their shortcomings and sins. These subtle (and not so subtle) messages reinforce a vague but persistent feeling in many men; a deep, gnawing feeling of shame about being male, that the Church has often reinforced.

Thus, for some Christian men, the “wounding” that the secular movement has identified is exacerbated by another standard to be measured against’ another avenue in which to feel the shame of failure.

Although there is certainly value and merit in exhortation and accountability, this is most likely to be successful in the context of unconditional acceptance and vulnerability, as occurs when men are given permission to be “broken” with each other and thus break through the isolation that so many men feel. We recognize that not all men are broken and wounded (although our professional experience tells us that the majority are, to some degree); however, one of the main thrust of the men’s movement is
to allow men to recognize the wounds that are present. There is no healing possible without a thorough examination of the wound.

Bly speaks of the danger of “ascending when we should be descending,” which seems to be a natural tendency of men, both secular and Christian. This is our concern with groups such as the Promise Keepers. While some men are intact enough for the accountability and exhortation offered by such groups, others will attempt to “ascend” rather than do the difficult and painful work of descending into their pain and brokenness.

2) Closely related to this is the danger of under-estimating the wound. The assumption that men can change simply by “trying harder” is rather demeaning to the many men who feel they have been “trying harder” without success; and more importantly, it ignores the issue of the wound within the man that may be rendering him incapable of making the desired changes in his life. Men struggling with sexual addictions or unwanted homosexual tendencies, for instance, have a wound underneath needing to be healed, of which the troubling behavior is a symptom. When the wound is uncovered, allowing the real need to surface and be tended to, the behavior can be dealt with. If the leaders of the fledgling Christian movement attempt to avoid the wounds that men suffer and move straight to exhortation and
admonition, the Church may find itself with fewer men, and those that are left more damaged and incapable of succeeding as men than before.

THE FATHER WOUND: THEOLOGICAL IMPLICATION OF THE MOVEMENT
“Show us the Father and that will be enough for us”
(John 14:8)

Returning to the main tenets of the men’s movement, we can discover some striking affinities between the needs of men, as presented by the men’s movement, and what scripture claims God offers his children. Here are the psychological and pastoral implications of the three main tenets of the men’s movement.

1) First, the men’s movement asserts that brokenness and woundedness are inherent in men today. From a theological and pastoral point of view, we could affirm the fact that sin has left us all broken and wounded. Children suffer for their fathers’ sins “to the third and fourth generations.” Since the
recognition of sin, or brokenness, is the beginning of healing, we in the Church should welcome this willingness by men to face their brokenness, recognizing that we have the solution to man’s deepest brokenness.

2) Secondly, the men’s movement recognizes the need for men to have models, to teach them how to be men. Jesus is just such a model and contrary to Bly, not an emasculated one. He did not simply teach men, or issue proclamations from a mountaintop; he chose men to live in community with him. Along with truths of the Kingdom that he was imparting to them, Jesus (who had his Father’s heart) also changed who they were and how they lived.  In the book of Acts, the model of the early Church features the  Gospel being propagated through mentoring relationships: Barnabas to Paul, Paul to Timothy and others, Timothy to the pastors under him. “And the things you have heard me say…entrust to reliable
men who will also be qualified to teach others.” We frequently hear of men desperately longing for older men in the church to disciple and mentor them. If they ask, they are often told that there is no one in the church to do that; they’re on their own.

This obvious need is an opportunity that the Church can ill afford to overlook. And yet, if the men in the Church are not willing to look at their won wounds and be healed, they will not have the wholeness needed to offer these young disciples.

3) The third need, which the men’s movement recognizes so well, is that men need to be vulnerable to other men for the healing to occur. What will it take for an atmosphere of vulnerability an openness to prevails in the community of believers, especially among male leaders? We have all seen, with painful clarity, the results of men in the Church isolation themselves, without accountability or community to remind them of their humanness.

Can we learn from these painful lessons, and from what the secular movement is showing us about the power of transparency, to attempt to re-institute the spirit of openness that seems to have existed in the early Church? How did Paul know about all the ugly secrets of the early Christians’ past, unless they had had the freedom to share that information with him? They apparently confessed to being idolaters, male prostitutes, thieves, adulterers, drunkards – “for that is what some of you were,” (I Cor. 6:9). We desperately need to regain the spirit that James assumed would prevail among believers, who would
confess their sins to each other to receive healing (James 5:16).

At the core of the men’s movement, behind the need for vulnerability, reparenting and mentoring from other men, looms the spectra of the father wound: a kind of Grand Canyon left in the soul of contemporary man. And at the heart of this wound lies the fact (missed completely by the secular movement) that no earthly father, no matter how lovingly affirming and involved he may be with his son, is going to perfectly fill that void.

Dalbey comments eloquently in “Healing the Masculine Soul”, “The danger of loving relationships is not in receiving love from another human being, but in believing that the other person is the source of that love.” He goes on to demonstrate from scripture that only the Father-God had “all the father’s
characteristics needed by the son.” Only when men return to him as the source of love, acceptance and guidance, can they become the men they were meant to be. This is the truth that the secular men’s movement is unwilling to grasp, and which the Christian community must embrace, if we are to offer men both the hope of real healing and the challenge of true masculinity embodied by Jesus Christ, the leader of men.

CONCLUSION
The secular men’s movement is doomed to failure because it is unwilling to connect to the Role Model, the Source of all masculinity, Jesus Christ. The Church must examine itself seriously to see what we have done with/to Jesus that has caused the secular man, desperate as he is for a role model and
leadership, to reject the best of all models. With costly honesty we must offer such models as we have among us of strength, courage, and masculine character. It is the burden of the men of this generation to give to others what they themselves never received.

1 An excellent discussion of the secular men’s movement’s dissatisfaction with the Church can be found in Ch. 13 of Dalbey’s book, “Father and Son”.

BACK ISSUES AND ARTICLES LISTING

Vol. 1 Manhood in Crisis

Counterfeit Love

Finding Life in Betrayal (Part 1)

God, You Just Don’t Understand

The Invisible Man

The Absolutes of Homosexuality

I need a “Quick Fix”

Testimony of a Sex Addict

Poem: Sitting on the Edge

Vol. 2 Sexual Problems in the Clergy

Living with Betrayal (Part 2)

Freedom From Sexual Addiction

Poem: Feeding My Master

Book Review: “Secrets of Your Family Tree”

Poem: Wedding Day

Vol. 3 Do Real Men go to Church

Don’t Curse the Road to Paradise

My Father’s Blessing

What Grows on the Family Tree?

Poem: By Brother’s Room

Vol. 4 Anger, Grief and Getting Unstuck in Recovery

Men & Sexual Abuse – Can Men Be Victims?

Poem: Streams of My Youth

Men on the Ropes

What Will They Say About You

Little White Boy

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